Toshiba AIO PC with very important information... and Windows 8!

[DejaVu]

Customer has bought this PC to me. Less than 3 months old. Been using it for his business... OK, great.

Problem No.1
It no longer boots correctly.
Takes forever to boot into the Windows 8 splash screen. It does get there, but the minute it does, the PC freezes.

Problem No.2
Refresh the PC
Windows 8 comes with a 'Refresh your PC' option, that has the ability to save all your documents and settings, yet reinstall the OS - losing a few programs along the way. Great! I'll give that a go.
Computer goes through all it's checks to makes sure it's possible... then this error -

"The drive where windows is installed is locked. Unlock the drive and try again".

OK, so who locked this drive and why? Googles results say to repartition/wipe/start over... you know, all the suggestions that are obvious, but not really a fix. More like a Nuke and Reboot.

It's not locked in BIOS, it's not locked in Windows 8 (usually). What is this all about? Anyone seen it before?

Reinstalling the OS is a last resort and I have to make sure I have the customers files off the HDD (remember I said it was an AIO PC! - Fun)

Going to try Safe Mode now, but any other suggestions would be appreciated.

[Mr.James]

Bios upgrade and reset to defaults? 'Hard drive locked' but not in bios sounds like the bios may be misreporting the status maybe?


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[x_Mr_C_x]

My first priority would be to back up the customers data either by imaging the drive or by using a boot cd and grabbing the important data (I generally use FabsAutoBackup4Tech for this). You will most likely need to turn off the various secure boot options in the bios before you can do this. Then I'd run diags on the hard drive using either the drive manufacturers tools or GSmartControl from the Parted Magic Live Linux CD. If that is all OK I'd then run chkdsk to make sure the file system isn't corrupt.

[Over Carl]

Couldn't you use something like a WinPE boot USB just to start the thing up and copy the files then reinstall 7?

Once you're done, plug in a USB drive and use something like Acronis to make an image so if this machine ever comes back it will be a piece of cake.

I remember when I used to look after loads of desktops my rough rule of thumb was that if I thought I could fix a pc within an hour I would. If I had spent more than an hour and a half on a problem and I still had no idea how long it would take then time to start from fresh. However I might have been biased because I knew I had good images for every machine I was responsible for.

[evilsatan]

Some very strange options in win 8 bios which cause very strange problems. I had a nightmare with a new win 8 laptop the other month, couldn't even get it to reinstall the os as the advanced boot menu was impossible to reach (I followed every guide). Dell support told me to remove battery, power up, remove ac adapter and repeat a few times until it forced the machine into recovery. Ridiculous to tell the owner to do this as it goes against usual good practices.

[x_Mr_C_x]

Remember you can make a recovery drive from a working Win 8 installation. This can come in very handy in situations where Windows 8 will not load the operating system. It will allow you to boot to the repair menu without having to resort to blindly powering off in the hope that the next reboot will will trigger it. I've been fortunate so far with all the Windows 8 PCs I've worked on. I've always been able to use my various tools to repair problems and to get customer data safely backed up. The only one that I had any issues with turned out to be a faulty hard drive and ended up going back to the manufacturer for a warranty repair.

[DejaVu]

Thanks for the suggestions lads.

Think I'll go down the Live Boot CD route, recover what I can and try a full wipe.
Will keep you posted.

[DejaVu]

Quick update with this.

Managed to load a Linux Live CD and have backed up all the information
I had to turn off Secure Boot and disable UEFI Bios in order to do so.

Now trying to get into BIOS to change the settings back, using F2 as instructed by the User Manual...

You can use BIOS Setup to set, change or delete the HDD Password or HDD Master Password.
To start BIOS Setup, press and hold the F2 key, and then turn on the computer. Release the F2 key one second after the computer is power on.
To end the BIOS Setup, press F10, and then press ENTER to accept the changes. The computer will restart.
If your computer does not load the BIOS Setup utility, please refer to the Troubleshooting section.

...it fails miserably and the first screen shown is the Boot from LAN option followed by, there is no Boot Disk, blah, blah, blah.

Tried with the Wireless Keyboard that comes with it and a separate USB Keyboard.
I'm pretty certain that this 1 second business (even though I've tried continuously tapping F2 too) is not long enough to load a USB driver to initialise the keyboard!

'Troubleshooting Section' only gives those generic stupid answers.

Sick to death of Windows 8 systems and the creators of this UEFI Bios bullshit, they need to revisit their fuck ups!

[Hangman]

If you do fix this, I would also install the Microsoft skydrive app and explain to the customer to use this folder for all his documents etc, that way if they have any future problems all the files etc will be safe.

If you don't live skydrive, you could suggest dropbox or box as an alternative.

Also if when you've done this for them, you could show them the app they can download for there smartphone, i'm sure they would be very happy with this so would not only use you again for future problems but would recommend you to others.

Sorry if this is telling you what you might already do, but if more people used these online tools your job would be so much easier

[DejaVu]

Managed to get it sorted by pulling the CMOS battery. Toshiba made this system really well!
Trying to prise the battery out, the entire holder came with it and spent the last 20 minutes resoldering it back on!

Back in BIOS now.

[plug1]

Sounds like bad ram to me , but pull the hdd put it in a caddy , if it is locked you won't be able to read it on other pc.
Can you boot it from a live OS cd /USB ?

ignore me , never read the full thread ,

[DejaVu]

The Hard drive was screwed, so I replaced it with a new one. Not so good - recovery partition = gone.
This system was originally Windows 8 x64 and now being told by the customer he never made any recovery DVD's, brings a whole new load of problems, but here are my findings.

Downloaded the 'early' 8.1 Windows Core x64 ISO with the hope that UEFI will just insert the Key. It never! Fun
Anyway, got round that and am currently installing Windows 8.1 using it, hoping to update the key from within the non-activated Windows install using RWEverything - not holding my breath.

Plus the fact that mydigitallife's forum has been hacked, my usual gold mine of information is unavailable.

NOTE:
Make sure when making a USB Drive to boot with UEFI that it is Fat32. It won't work with NTFS.
Secure Boot is also enabled and seems to be working so far.